Why one should not read this blog II

Waste, dirt, disgust etc. etc. are no new topics to the humanities, even though people regularly like to claim so (e.g. Cohen 2005). Yesterday I started reading William Ian Millers "The Anatomy of Disgust" (1997), which quotes Susan Miller, who has published an article on disgust in the International Review of Psychoanalysis as early as 1986. Interestingly Susan says exactly what I said in my first entry (and William Miller agrees): She complains that "contact with the disgusting makes one disgusting. To study disgust is to risk contamination; jokes about his or her unwholesome interests soon greet the disgust researcher." Well, I wouldn't say it that harshly-- and I think she does exaggerate--but it strongly reminds me of the big laughs I got when people told each other I was writing a PhD on rubbish. I guess it is something people cannot take seriously without risking contamination.
The sad thing about it though is that according to XF of the STRC PhD researchers should do research on successful things, whereby they become experts on success - in this sense I'll be an expert on disgusting stuff, which surely provides great employability. No, of course I don't share that collaborative perspective anyway.

Keep the mountains clean! Don't leave your waste!

Thanks Josef for this very nice picture! It was taken at Hohe Tauern (Austria) when walking to the OeAV Badener hut. I've seen these signs on other mountains in Austria as well, indeed at the Schneekuppe you have them all over the place. Anyhow, they seem quite historic. The way "Lasst" was spelled suggests that this sign was put up at latest in 1998 when the german orthography was reformed. By the way, I enjoyed titanic's comment on the discussion around the reform, when the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung refused to deploy it: http://www.titanic-magazin.de/fileadmin/wwwold/www/archiv/0904/images/cover0904.jpg What a waste of time. & What a connection back to the topic: This sign is the most obvious piece of evidence of how tourists are being disciplined through regulating their material basis and behaviour.

Why one should not read this blog...

Finally, William A. Cohen made me realize why John Scanlan quotes a New York Dolls song (wrongly, as John remarks). This light bulb moment, which is the kind of the researcher's compensation for a nerdy low-income life in the libraries, made me start this blog and scream it warningly into the world:

"Trash, don't pick it up - Don't throw your life away"

No, don't pick it up, because it's gluey, it's sticky and you won't get rid of it again. Or to say it with the more complicated words of William A. Cohen: "By the time one has encountered and repudiated filth, it is too late - the subject is already besmirched by it. In this way, filth challenges the very dichotomy between subject and object. It does so according to a psychoanalytic logic, whereby repulsion and attraction unconsciously converge, and phenomenologically as well: the filth of the object defiles the subject who, identifying it as such, has had to rub up against it."

What does that really mean in practice? Do you have to touch the filth, to see it, to feel it, or is it even enough to just read and write about it? It indeed is: Read Laporte's 'History of Shit' and you'll know what I am talking about. Exhibit 'the handling of waste in history' and people will call you 'Mag. Muell' (in case you have academically studied the phenomenon). Start a PhD on rubbish and you'll get information on (what's hot and) what's not every other day. The topic is sticky and it won't leave you, so beware!